


You Rough Legged, Sharp Shinned, Red Tailed, Mother of Mine

by hanktalkin



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blue Hawke (Dragon Age), Divorce, Established Relationship, F/F, Mage Abuse and Opression (Dragon Age), Mage Hawke (Dragon Age), Parenthood, Rivalmance (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-01-29 19:37:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21415567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanktalkin/pseuds/hanktalkin
Summary: Hawke collects strays. It’s a tragedy and you know it.
Relationships: Anders & Isabela (Dragon Age), Female Hawke/Isabela
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	1. Shoulders Are Not Meant for Holding Houses

“Hawke, I don’t know how to tell you this, but there’s a goblin in your pantry.”

The girl in the bag of dried fruit shrinks before you, eyes darting between your face and the triangle of candlelight shining through your crooked arm. Not that you’d stop her if she made a break for it, but she probably shouldn’t try. There are meaner people than you.

There’s a rustling of robes, and then Hawke is there, batting you aside. “Leave her be,” she tells you tersely. Tersely! Like you’re the one stealing from her cupboards. (Granted, that was your intended course of action, but Hawke can’t judge you for not-yet-done thievery.)

The girl now adds Hawke to the list of things she’s looking between, which still includes you.

“Don’t mind her,” Hawke says when she notices. “She’s just a mean old lady. C’mon.” Hawke gets on one knee and extends her delicate fingers, somehow without her legs getting tangled in the folds of her robes.

Slowly, the child inches forward, and takes Hawke’s hand. She’s still holding a plum.

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting a snack,” Hawke tells her. “But you have to ask me or Leandra first before taking things from the kitchen, alright?”

For a second, the girl looks she might just about cry. But then she lets out a soft “…alright,” that’s so quiet, you’re surprised you heard it at all.

When Hawke has fully herded her out of the pantry, you ask the obvious. “Finally caught one for you blood rituals, Hawke?”

Hawke ignores you. The girl looks up, but since apparently you’re a Mean Old Lady, she just tilts her head at you. Not even a little gasp of shock! Kids these days. She sits on a stool as Hawke begins to cut her plum.

“I’ve been helping Lirene,” Hawke says as she slices, the slick brown insides revealed piece by piece, glistening in the warm air of the cook fire. “Money where I can. But there’s so many people that need it…Fereldans without anywhere to go even when it’s been _years_.” She doesn’t look up. “She doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

You don’t know why you’re so annoyed with a goblin living in Hawke’s home, but you are. “So you’re just going to let some bit of flotsam stay in your home on nothing but good graces?”

She shoots you a grin. “Are you talking about you or her?” Well, walked right into that one. “She’s staying. You won’t change my mind.”

“Oh fine,” you tut. “Though I’m not giving up my half of the bed.”

“I would never ask such a thing.” A wane smile crosses Hawke’s face as she sashays around you, setting a plate in front of the girl. “I think the two of you are going to be good friends. Tell Isabela your name, dear.”

The girl looks up, nibble of plum already on her tongue. “…It’s Bella.”

“Of course it is,” you sigh. “Of course it is.”

* * *

Slowly, over the course of years and coming home one day to see a new face playing by the fire, the estate becomes what a Free Marcher would call a “halfway house” and a sailor would call a “two-story port.” Most of them don’t stay forever—Fereldans who need a roof over their head just for a few weeks, or families hit by a sudden loss—but others you find crawled up in nooks around the house and can’t be shaken loose. Like…birds who build their nest in the same spot of the rigging, no matter how many times you clean it out. The orphans that make their home in Hawke’s play outside in the street, and there’s not a damn thing any of her noble neighbors can do about it.

“This place is getting a reputation,” you comment idly.

Lirene cuts you a look. She comes by, not often, not when she still has a shop to look after and a thousand and one self-taken burdens of her own, but enough that she’s developed a distaste for you.

You rather she didn’t, so you soften it with a, “don’t get me wrong: not one I wasn’t already giving it.”

She doesn’t appreciate the joke. Still, her frown lessens.

Making friends with Hawke’s business partner is cut short when the woman herself comes sweeping into the foyer. “Sorry about that, someone spilled some juice on the dog; I think they were trying to give her some.” She tugs on a sleeve of her coat. “Is there anything I can get you, Lirene?”

“No, I was just heading out myself,” Lirene says, her eyes flickering to you briefly.

Hawke doesn’t seem to notice. She nods, and leans around the corner say, “Isabela and I are off to the clinic!”

“Stay safe dear,” Leandra calls like clockwork. She shares an overlarge chair with Bella on one arm and Cricket on the other, a wide book on her lap. Evelina gives you a muted goodbye, followed by a choir of other voices, and you almost think you’ve made your escape when you hear the pattering of feet.

“Oof,” you do declare when a small body flings itself against your legs.

The arms latch on like a barnacle, and Gideon tilts his head up at you, chin resting against your thigh. “Bring me back somthein’, Isa?”

It’s not the nickname you would have chosen for yourself. Plus, you’re pretty sure it means “grandma” in Tevene.

You extract Gideon just enough that you can crouch to his level, his bare feet scuffing as he backs up. Why this one has chosen to attach himself to you, you can’t begin to fathom, but you’ve never been one to turn down undeserved adoration. “And what do you want this time, little one? More rings that don’t fit you?”

He shakes his head, and points behind your back. “I want a knife. Like yours.”

The smile gets stuck in your teeth, and you’re caught looking at eyes too wide behind a curly mop. Slowly, aware of Hawke’s scrutiny on the back of your neck, you draw your blade and hold it two-fingered in front of you. “It’s not a knife, poppet,” you tell him. Every word feels like a balancing act, as tenuous as the blade rested on your hands. “It’s a dagger. It’s sharp, and you won’t need one as long as I have mine.”

You won’t lie to him and tell him you’ve only ever used it on people who deserved it, and you won’t tell him it’s not something for children, no matter how much you can feel Hawke wants you to. If fate had twisted just a little differently, he may have had his own by now, and use it more than you.

Gideon frowns, obviously not sure what to think just yet. You rise to your feet, a pop in your knees, and tousle his hair. You still feel his eyes on your back as you turn out the gate and down the plaza.

You part ways with Lirene in Lowtown and take Hawke’s long and circuitous path to the dark. It surprises you how well-lit Anders’s clinic always is, how suited the room seems despite the cramped tunnels that lead in and out. Huge shafts of light carve down from the ceiling, creating a pool for Hawke to delicately step into.

She’s barely dirtied her shoes before Anders has her by the sleeve. “I need your help,” he says, a tug and a look over his shoulder.

“Of course,” she says immediately. “Anything.”

“Oh Hawke, this is always how we end up in trouble,” you remind her. You are ignored.

But thankfully Anders only drags her over to a human man, curled on his side in a sick bed, instead of off on another trek through the sewers. Anders kneels, and Hawke follows suit, the explanation arising, “there’s an excess of fluids in his abdomen. We need a concentrated burst of magic to clear the cyst. Now.”

There’s more to healing magic than just wave your hands and make stuff green. At least, that’s what you’ve gathered from spending many an evening in the presence of Anders while he explains to you things you didn’t actually ask about. He’ll gladly tell you how potions and poultices can be made by just about anyone, but a talented mage can increase their effectiveness tenfold. It involves some knowledge about the human body and a general understanding of what’s wrong, but anything more complicated than that and you begin to nod off during the explanation. Anders presses his hands against the man’s stomach, Hawke with palms flat against his back, and they count down from three.

On zero, there’s a flash, and the man hisses. But that’s it: Hawke gets to her feet, dusting off where mud has sweetly caressed knees.

“He going to be alright?” you ask, swinging around Anders’s shoulder where his robes smell like sharpened alcohol.

“He’ll be pissing blood for about a week,” Anders admits with a swipe at his forehead. “Other than that, should be fine once he’s cleared everything out.”

He looks tired, though from the quick mana drain than anything beyond the usual. Seeing Hawke always has a way of dusting off his usual exhausted exterior.

“I’m glad you came when you did,” he tells her.

She smiles feebly. “Well, I can’t say it was purely altruistic. I was hoping to spirit you away from your patients, if you have the time. I have business in town.”

Oh boy. Hawke Has Business in Town could be the title to your life’s story. Or the opening line to your eulogy, if things keep going at this rate.

“What are we up to today?” he asks. The feathers on his coat puff cheerfully, unaware their birds have been dead for decades.

“The Viscount’s son is missing. I have a few ideas about that.”

So that’s how you spend your day, tying up loose ends while the sun paints an amber stain on the horizon. In various aftermaths, you dart in-between bodies and cut the throats of the whoever-it-was that attacked you while Hawke and Aveline stand over the scene and rub their chins. There’s quite a few full purses that you’re happy to add to your pockets, and some new rings that are still far too big. You’re almost home, Hawke sunk in thought, you examining a necklace and wondering if it’s too gaudy, when you hear the commotion coming from within the estate. She looks at you, and you look at her, and the both of you break into a simultaneous sprint for the last remaining feet beneath the ivy’d arch.

There’s been a cyclone.

That is all your mind can manage because furniture is thrown about, and there’s water (water, why was there water?) and Evelina is screaming to _get back_, get _back_, just don’t _touch_ her.

Walter is inching forward, step by step, his hands reached out in pacification like she’s just another scared dog he can feed old cheese and bring home. “Evelina, please stop, he said he’s sorry. You’re scaring-”

He touches her elbow.

Evelina doubles over, arms wrapped around her middle as she groans, and you don’t need the crackle in the air to let you know that something is terribly wrong. She throws out her back and screams.

A wave—necrotic simpering sucking energy that’s burned you and nearly killed you more times than you can count—comes spiraling out of innocuous little Evelina. That killing magic that you’ve faced (and only ever survived because a few mages of your own) now mushrooms through the unprepared house. It catches Walter and takes him with. He dies when his head hits the stone above the fireplace.

Evelina turns to the entryway, her eyes lavender and alive, balls of grey mass already forming alongst her shoulders, strange fabric that shouldn’t exist flying out of her skin in dregs.

Hawke does not hesitate. Hawke does not wait. Hawke sees every decision in shades of black and white and she always acts upon what she sees between the light and dark. She steps forward, staff towing along the rough floor like a match dragged on stone, bringing the bottom up in one blinding _snap_ as she launches a ball of red at the abomination.

It fizzles through the air, landing in Evelina’s half-formed insides. There is a second where everything pauses, where all parties recognize what has been done.

And then Evelina explodes.

It is a shower of ash, cooling and dissipating before it even reaches the floor. There is screaming, both children and Leandra alike, and someone is by Walter’s side trying their best to see him awake. Your daggers are in your hands, but there is nothing for you to do; the world is full of power and no matter how much you take life in your hands, it will all fall down to the fallibility of the instant. There is still ash landing on your skin. There is nothing for you to do and, as much as we like to pretend otherwise, it’s horrifyingly common how often that happens.

* * *

You find them in the bedroom, later when all the lights are off but no one is asleep. Hawke is on the bed, Cricket curled against her chest, his cheeks wet and his eyes closed. On his other side is Bella, her face pressed against his back. She, at least, could fool you for sleep, but every now and again she squeezes the hand of the crying boy in front of her. Hawke has her arm around both, her hand carding through red hair, the small motion mesmerizing in its repetitiveness. Her eyes are locked on the opposite wall, peering at a map only she can see, a detailed illustration of every way she’s ever gone wrong. Abandoning the doorway, you slide onto Bella’s other side.


	2. What Pride Allows

Hawke teaches you all how to cook shakshuka on a grim morning when the rain turns the streets of Hightown as grey as an old blanket. It’s the kind of rain that sticks to you; too fine to keep off with an umbrella, one that gets into shawls and scarves and never lets your hair get quite dry.

The air in the kitchen smells hot and sharp by comparison, rich with cumin but still just as damp with the steam that rises out of the pot. Bella is meant to be cracking the eggs for the dish, but each try leaves a trail of shell along the side of the bowl. So, you’ve taken each of her hands in yours, and guide her to tap them along the rim with care. Hawke is stirring the tomato paste, watching as Harvel and Sorros try to prove they’re _not babies_ by cutting the onions all on their own. There’s a suppressed smile on Hawke’s face as they try not to sniffle, and you watch her hide it with a twinge on your own. You haven’t seen her smile since Walter’s death.

You finish, help Bella clean herself up. “Could mistake it for something Rivain,” you remark to Hawke. “Lots of spices. Too bloody hot. More vegetables than you can show some ankle at.”

“My father was from Antiva,” she says. The wooden spoon scrapes against the bottom. “He taught us how to make it, back when we…were all together.”

You know some of the sordid history of the Hawke-Amell family, know that she had siblings before coming to Kirkwall. Those seem far too fresh though: she’ll talk about her father readily enough, but not then. Most else of what you’ve learned has come from Leandra.

In not-quite-a-subject change, you say, “Antiva’s not a far shake from Rivain. If we had some eggplant, it’d be just like home.”

“You know, I do have some eggplant in the pantry,” she says with a thoughtful finger to her cheek.

You blink. “Are you sure sweet thing? Don’t think that won’t ruin your cherished childhood dish?”

She smiles. The second time in so long. “There’s nothing wrong with a family that changes. They’re over there, right above the cabbages.”

The warm air is cut with a sound from the back door. “Shall I get that for you, messere?” Bodahn calls from the parlor.

“No no, I’ve got it.” Hawke stops stirring, and wipes her hands on her apron. “Merrill, will you keep this up for me?”

Merrill takes over gleefully, and Hawke departs. Her eyes are still a tad blotchy.

“Think you’re able to conquer this vegetable, kitten?” you tease, scooping out the last of the eggshells.

She pouts, sore over her defeat. “I don’t know what it is! I don’t even feel sad.”

“They’re onions,” you chuckle. “That’s just what they do.”

The twins, taking up where Merrill left off, aren’t doing much, but bless their souls they are doing it. The elf boys are a pair of troublemakers, a little older than Bella but not quite as old as Cricket, and they’ve chased half their tutors away in the few short years they’ve been here. Not until Merrill did they straighten up a bit. You think it has something to do with connecting to someone in a house full of “shems” (never mind the pair of dwarves and the whole pack of dogs) that makes them feel more at home. Ever since Merrill has been settling them down to tell Dalish stories and giving _all_ the children lessens in Elvish, they’ve lost the fire that made them a pain. Plus, Hawke thinks its good for the others to learn a different perspective to history.

You scoop out a beautiful purple eggplant, just where Hawke said. The twins finish cutting, and you tell them to go wash out their eyes in the basin. Hawke still isn’t back yet.

Stalking from the kitchen, you slip out to the back door, the one surrounded by the iron gate with the awning out of the rain. The one folded into a small, drab street that stretches for a winding mile. The one that often finds itself used for deliveries made in secret.

“Please,” the woman on the stoop is saying. “Please don’t let them take her. I’ll do anything, just please let her stay with you.”

There is a girl. She is dark and straight haired, holding her mother’s hand and looking up at the estate like it is ready to eat her.

Hawke’s back is to you, but her the straightness of her spine tells you all you need. “I am sorry serah.” Her voice is so strangled, so desperate to be still. “I cannot take mages. If you want her to be safe, you must take her to the Circle.”

The woman bursts into tears, still clutching her daughter’s hand. “Don’t you know what they’ll do to her there?” Her voice is almost a wail, echoing down the cramped street. “You could train her! She- she won’t hurt anyone if you can teach her to control it.”

You watch, that barest composing of the shoulders. “I am sorry serah, you are mistaken. I am no mage. And I must ask again that you leave.”

Tears streak down the woman’s face. Above her quivering lip, the faith dies. With a snag of her side, she turns, gently pulling her daughter back into the city. The girl is still looking up at the estate when they round the corner and disappear.

Hawke leans against the doorframe, forehead against the back of her hand. “…Can I help you, Isabela?”

You stand next to her on the stoop. “That’s it? ‘No mages here, serah’?”

She whirls on you. “And what else am I supposed to do? Let her come in just because she threatens the Circle?”

“Already have a mage and a half,” you shrug. “What’s one more?”

She glares at you, stepping closer until you can see the green menace sparkling in her eye. “What’s one more? One more untrained mage? That’s just another chance where we aren’t so lucky the next time. Someone dies and we can’t just cover it up and pretend it never happened: what then? The more rumors, the less charitable the Knight-Commander becomes about some blatant up-and-coming mage that’s been living right under her nose. Do you think she doesn’t already have her suspicious?”

Hawke turns, her hand over her mouth, eyes closing like she can’t bear to see one more inch of colorless Hightown streets.

“Meredith won’t bother you,” you tell her. “You’ve already made too many friends. She picks at the weakest link.”

“And what if you’re wrong, Isabela?” she says softly, her face wet in the grey air, highlighted against the thin light. “Is that what you want for us? Do you want to be like Anders, hiding every fourtnight when the raids come by? What if they take me?” Her voice cracks, and then pauses, soft in its own private agony. “Who will take care of them if I’m gone?”

You open your mouth.

She notices, and practically seethes, “_you?_”

You close your mouth.

“That’s what I thought.” She rolls her shoulders back. With a dry corner of the apron, she wipes her cheeks, and pushes past you into the house, leaving you shunned on her doorstep, much like the terrified mother who was there not a minute ago.

* * *

In the middle of the night, there’s a knock at the door. It is barely perceptible, deafened by the rest of the house until the only thing you should be able to hear is the slide of curtains on floor. But yours is the bedroom above the door, so you hear it anyway. Hawke gets out of bed, the near-silent scuff as she dons her slippers and pads across the bedroom floor. You don’t know why you follow her.

This time, there is no mother, no lost mage who has heard Hawke’s name and had the tiniest glimmer of hope. There is the air, the kind crisp with autumn yet still cut with the stink of sea, even all the way in Hightown. It makes you shiver; Hawke’s nightshirt barely keeping out the sting.

There is no mother, there is no beggar. What there is is Anders, holding something wrapped tight to his chest, with an apology in his eyes that goes beyond what is deserved. One that isn’t just for you.

“Anders.” Hawke’s voice is still upstairs, in the warm blanks she left. “Why are…?”

The baby in his arms gurgles. The sound of air leaving Hawke’s lungs masks the sound from your own.

Anders looks up at her from the bottom of the stairs. “Her mother’s dead,” he supplies desolately. “A few hours ago.” He’s steady, in that act-or-die way you’ve seen him become when he needs to save lives. Maybe’s he’s forgotten how to come out of it. Maybe, for the time being, he still needs it to hold him upright. “I did what I could.”

Hawke draws a breath and looks each way down the street. “And there’s no one else who can…?”

“Her mother was fleeing the circle.”

The wind suddenly evacuates. On that dull street, the silence could hear the hear the drop of a feather on stone. Hawke turns her head, and you watch baleful hands that oh so desperately want to twist the hem of her gown but which pride won’t allow. Pride won’t allow a lot of things. Pride’s a bitch like that. There are dark shapes on Anders clothes: you’ve come to recognize them as bloodstains—the strange pink tinge of fresh ones wiped hastily away with magic, and not yet taken to with a bar of soap. He’s done his best, but his ghost is practically dripping with uncompleted miracles.

Hawke still cannot find a place to put her eyes. They keep falling across the baby, then her friend, and then occasional twitch to the side that shows she knows you’re there. Anders watches her, betraying nothing. You don’t know what he’ll do if Hawke says no. You don’t think he does either. You watch from the stairs and say nothing.

Her mouth sets, and she looks down. Her voice is breathless. Like the faint wind has stolen it away. “Here.” She opens her arms.

Anders takes a step upwards and places the child in the bassinet of her chest. The moment freezes in a tableau, a mirage left over even as the scene progresses and Hawke draws the child into her. You think that image—Anders with one foot raised, Hawke leaning down to him—will always be plastered in your mind, one you’ll keep coming back to years into the future. Hawke pauses to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, and bounces the baby. The wind returns, but something else does not. Something’s been stolen, something specifically from you.

* * *

Days later but in the same night, you hear her crying. You find her in the kitchen, dried goat’s milk and broken glass abandoned on the table, the baby in her arms. Her shoulders are shaking, her hiccups punctuated by the defeated _shh shh_ as she attempts to calm the child clutched to her chest. The baby’s cries mix with her own in the cold room.

Without a word, you step forward, and take it from her. At first, her eyes are open in shock, red and tear streaked, but then her face grows small as you begin to rock the baby in your arms.

You sing. At first, it’s just notes, slow and lowered in a house that demands silence in the dead hour that it is. But then a tune comes back to you, one that once your mother sang, that crossed ne’re your lips but hers. In that damaged room, it escapes you, and when Hawke’s hand rests on your forearm in gratitude, it does not hurt.


	3. Interlude

You get a tip.

* * *

When Anders sets the milk down near your feet, you share its fate in the immediate swarm. “Someone like her could do so much,” he says, gathering up another bowl and drawing half the cats away. “The mage underground has precious few friends. Seeing someone as powerful as Hawke living the way that she does…it gives people hope.”

“She’s a person, not a Canticle,” you belie. “Hope’s not her responsibility unless she signs up.”

Leave it to Anders to make you take Hawke’s side when you came here to vent about petty relationship drama. Maybe that’s your own damn fault: Anders never bends on anything, not if there’s a lecture to be made. You like Anders, you really do, but you never know what topic is going to bring out the Justice in him. He’s as unpredictable as a reef waiting below the surface, and just as severe.

“What I mean,” he says, “is that she’s the best of us. Someone people should think of when they hear the word mage. Not those that give us a bad name.”

He deliberately doesn’t look at your own Kitten, who’s fast asleep against your shoulder. The three of you have been abandoned, Hawke Has Business in Town and all that. You should charge Varric for the rights. Still, you’re not about to make this easy for Anders, no matter how long you’re left waiting in this unbusy clinic.

“You spend an awful lot of time deciding who’s the good mages and who’s the bad mages.” You absently scratch a passing calico. “If you want your respect, it should be for all of you, don’t you think?”

Ander’s mouth is a line, but he is not a man with whom doubts stay with for long. “It matters when that’s all people see. What I’m saying is that Hawke’s support would be greater than any other singular person’s.”

Ah, right, the crux of the matter. You have no idea why you thought complaining would make you feel better. You don’t think Anders knew about her reservations regarding mages, otherwise you’re sure he wouldn’t have brought Malory to you in the first place.

(_To Hawke_, you remind yourself. _Not to you. That was a **you** in the collective sense anyway, nothing to berate yourself over, no ser_.)

“I thought you were encouraging her to take people in, anyway,” he adds idly.

“Me? Noooo.” You wave him off. “I simply provide observations. If she’s making her own contradictions, I can’t be blamed.”

“Of course,” he says in a voice that clearly does not believe you. “No opinion one way or the other. The fact that she’s collected you doesn’t mean a thing.”

“Excuse me? I have not been _collected_.”

Anders gives you a look. You hate that look.

And you feel it under your skin, too. There’s been tinges of it, that prickle at the back of your neck, a deep primal fear that’s oh so easy so cover with games of cards and whispers against skin. But when you hold Malory sometimes it come back in full force, and the house walls seem to shrink in on you.

“I can go any time I want,” you say. And it’s to convince Anders, no one else.

You hold that, never letting it dip below the water line, even when Hawke comes back with a fresh cut on her lip. She doesn’t mention where she got it. You don’t ask, and rouse Merrill to wakefulness.

* * *

It is with that impending doom, that inescapable claustrophobia, that you lean on the banister over the foyer and feel like all the people skittering below aren’t quite as real as you.

“Hold her head now,” Bodahn is saying as the fire crackles through the tuning of a lute.

Sandal looks down at Malory delicately, cradling her just as Bodahn showed him. “…Small,” he notes thoughtfully.

“That she is, son,” Bodahn chuckles.

What if you never escape this house, with its jammy hands and cushy red velvet? What if you never see her again? Your one, _true_ love, the one still waiting for you out there. What if you stay in this blighted city until you die?

Orana is almost done with the lute. Bella ties little braids in Orana’s hair while the elf’s fingers stroke the wrought strings. There are crow’s feet at the corner of Hawke’s eyes when she smiles. You haven’t checked yours.

So is it any surprise, that when the tip comes through—and it’s not just another one of Wall-Eye’s feeble promises—you take the leap?

Not surprising, but still stupid. You nearly don’t make it to the foundry on the stinking edge of the dock, so used are you to a group of ragtag misfits at your back. And even then, your life nearly ends one foot in the door when during the ensuing fight you take a slip on the shifting layers of hay and fall flat on your arse. This pathetic little life you’ve been squandering flicks in in the eyes of a still approaching qunari, along with the vengeance there. But, undeserving as you are, you’re still fortune’s daughter. You toss your spare boot-dagger, land a lucky hit, and fall backwards on the ground when you see him do the same. You lie there, blood and filth sticking to your back, and stare at the rafters above you. It takes an embarrassing amount of time for you to rise. Then you’re gone—one ancient book pressed to your chest like it’s your salvation. Your firstborn in a hungry world.


	4. When He Dies

“That’s it?” Hawke asks, staff in tight hands, monumental at the top of the stairs like the whole world is beneath her. “Three years and that’s all you’ve got to say?” A waterless laugh falls out of her. “Excuse me if I’m not _gracious_ enough in welcoming back the illustriously reinstated Captain Isabela. Won’t the Raiders be missing you, _Captain_?”

You swallow. Somehow, in your stupidly massive misguided love for her, you’ve forgotten that Hawke is very very dangerous. Storm clouds are gathering outside the estate and something about her anger leaves you justifiably afraid…yet you can’t help yourself—you’re also in awe.

“They can do without me again,” you say, by way of escape. They certainly hadn’t missed you the first time you were gone, and with the retraction of Castillon’s bounty, you hadn’t even earned the entertainment of a few assassination attempts. “I’m back.”

This, by the narrowing of Hawke’s sunset eyes, means about as much as an ant she’d seen on the ground today. “Three years is the time it takes for a smuggling route to complete its course. You’re here on shore leave. If Gideon hadn’t gone, you wouldn’t be back at all.”

At that, you wince, because of _course_ you were coming back, things just…kept getting in the way. As for Gideon, well, when Varric sent you that letter…maybe you did sail to Kirkwall faster than your crew would have liked. Not that it made any difference. When you made port, you touched in with every old contact, hassled every undercity eye—even harangued _Aveline_ for Andraste’s sake! All for nothing. Sometimes young men with fast fingers and a penchant for the thrilling simply go missing in Kirkwall and there’s nothing anyone can do.

You turn your head. “That’s not true.”

“No? We’re an afterthought Isabela. Maker, you didn’t even come home when _mother_ died…” That hardened pain flakes for a moment, revealing the grief underneath the monster at the top of the stairs.

“I’m sorry,” you rush out. Little patches of tack in a leaking boat.

“I know.” She pinches the bridge of her nose, then sighs. “I didn’t mean to bring up…I know you looked for Gideon.”

There is still pity there. Pity’s great. Pity you can work with. “I’m sorry,” you repeat.

A bit of fight leaves Hawke’s posture. After all, whatever sparks anger, there is always a root. You may like to keep tangles as free from feelings as seaweed from oars, but you know that much, at least. You hesitate, but press forward with a cautious, “what else has happened since I’ve gone?”

She adjusts her shawl. “I’m a Champion now.”

“I’ve heard.”

“I don’t feel like one. I feel like an old woman.”

She lets air out her nose. After a pause, she begins down the stairs until you’re so close to her you could reach out and brush your hand along her cheek. You want to reach out to her skin, feeling that deep, throbbing ache that’s been holding you hostage for the past year.

You restrain yourself. “If you’re an old woman, what does that make me?”

She snorts, ruffling the fur on her shawl. “An old woman’s harlot.”

“Hey,” you say, “harlot’s my word.”

She chuckles, and good Maker you’ve missed that smile. Her eyes are shining, bright with a relief she doesn’t quite herself allow.

“How is Mal?” you ask.

“Healthy,” she nods.

“And Bella?”

And at that, all hope dies. Her lips form a line and she turns to face those high, thin windows that let in the view of the gray storm. “Bella’s gone.”

“Gone?” No, she can’t be gone, not the way Gideon’s gone. “Hawke, where is she?”

Hawke breathes in a way you’ve seen before. Magic leaves trails of yellow vapor as she exhales through her mouth—like she does right before a fight, when she needs her focus at its strongest. “One day she called me downstairs. She opened her hands, and showed me the flowers she made: ones glowed white, and didn’t wilt until she blew on them. Isabela…it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.” She rests her staff on the ground. “I sent her to the circle.”

“You _what???_” Outrage doesn’t even begin to describe it. “The circle? The _Kirkwall_ circle? You of all people-”

“Me of all people?” She whirls on you. “Because I’m a mage? Because in some inexplicable bout of luck I grew outside of it and managed to survive? ‘I of all people’. Pah.”

You can’t believe this. Hawke loves, Hawke loves more than anything. “How could send her away, just like that?”

“_Just like that?_” She’s in your face now, the jagged edges of her coming apart and pointed right at you. “You think you alone know pain, Isabela? You think because the world has left you jaded and cruel that everyone else is just like you? Well some of us can’t hide, can’t find ‘freedom’ by tearing everything up by the roots and wading into the sea.”

Her voice echoes through the estate, shaking the panes of those great tall windows.

“You may play the grand arbiter of this family but you’re a coward, Captain. She was _my_ daughter, _not_ yours. And you never _let_-” Her voice cracks so sharply she falls forward, the single falter crashing around her. Tears cling to her eyelashes, and she stares with pure contempt at the adulterer before her. “I wanted everything with you Isabela. This-” she gestures around you, “is my future, and I wanted it with you. But all you ever did was hide or run and if this isn’t the future you want then you can just go.”

You want to hold her again. And not just take her to bed and feel her lips against yours, but to grab her shoulder and make her face you. But she’s turned her back on you now and regretting falling for her in the first place hurts a whole lot less than blaming yourself for what you’ve done.

So you leave.

But you don’t get on that damn ship.

* * *

“Martin you scoundrel,” you greet, sliding into the stool next to him. “Have I got a present for you.”

* * *

“…And she _is_ a beautiful weapon,” you say, leaning around Varric’s back though not actually daring to touch the curved yew of Bianca’s limb. Even you know how far to take a joke. “Some day my dear, some day.”

“Am I going have to start sleeping with one eye open?” Varric asks as he slides Norah a coin. “And here I was happy you were back.”

“Don’t take it personally,” Anders says from your other side. “She still asks to talk to Justice every other week.”

“He never returned my letters,” you complain.

The Hanged Man is a scratching and bleak comfort, too dim and too bright all at the same time. It’s like putting on an old pair of boots you swore you’d thrown away: hurts where the broken soul is digging into your heel, but in a familiar sort of way.

“Does Hawke know?” Varric asks, and just like that, your smile falls off your face and into your tankard.

“She knows I sold the ship.” You drink. “Don’t know if she has an opinion on it.”

“You don’t?” Anders inquires with false incredulousness. He sips his own mead like he rather it were anything else.

“I suppose I can guess,” you admit.

If you’re being honest, you’re not even sure Hawke has the _time_ to hate you with all the public services she’s apparently up to. Things have gotten much worse in Kirkwall in the short time you’ve been gone, more than you’d first guessed. From your brief conversation with Anders, you know that the Viscount can do very little to stop the encroaching power of the Knight-Commander; doors get locked tighter at night, mage and non-mage alike wade through fear as each day the line between grows darker.

“You should talk to her,” Varric points out ever so wisely.

You sigh. You hate when he says very simple and very reasonable things. “I will. I’ll get to that. Things need to happen…”

“Naturally?” Anders supplies.

“That’s a word.” You frown at the splintered bar. If you squint hard enough, you can see where you’ve carved your name into the oak. “…It’ll happen, though.” This one’s a promise. One way or another, you didn’t just sell your pride and joy to _not_ reconnect with the most difficult former lover in the world.

Varric watches you for a moment, but gives a light nod. Anders just shrugs, and asks Norah for some water instead.

* * *

“Why don’t you come home anymore, Isabela?”

Your attempt at a comforting smile comes on too quickly, and what results is more of a wormy line across your mouth. Ruffling Cricket’s hair, you pass it off with a, “your Mother and I are having issues at the moment.”

“What kind of issues?” he asks with the sort of blatant devil-may-care voice that only a child or Merrill can possess.

“The horrible kind that only people in love can have.” You dangle one boot over the edge of the Chantry roof, leaving it pendulous for the moonlit streets below.

“Oh.” Cricket thinks for a moment, chipping his dagger at a piece of loose brick. “You’ll come back though, right?”

With one arm, you fold it behind your back, and stretch upward into the dazzling sky. There’s a comforting pop in your spine. “…I hope so.”

And, as short-sighted as betting before your second card is in hand, you _do_ hope. You’ve come by, little by little, apologies that are going to take time if any of the books you’ve read are things to go by. That, and the advice Aveline has given you, which for once in your life you’ll actually take.

(If it wasn’t obvious, you’re not experienced with this whole fixing bridges thing.)

It’s good to be home. Even you can’t deny that. You missed the estate with its walls that can keep the dark winds out and everything you cherish in. You missed warm breakfast. You missed holding Malory in your arms. You missed Hawke’s chin on your shoulder.

Hawke’s not been well. You can tell despite the briefness of your conversations, fleeting glimpses of reconciliation, each one a step closer, even if it is the tiniest step. Between the moments where you can make her smile, you can see the world hanging in the bags of her eyes, the weight of a city sitting on her shoulders. After a mass of escapes from the Gallows and a string of murders uncovered by the Guard, tensions within Kirkwall could not be more fraught. She’s changed in the time you’ve been gone, and changing further still, the blooming hostilities getting her to see herself as a Mage with a capital M.

The newest tutor has a stick of wood strapped across her back. You catch Hawke and Anders in the middle of another hushed conversation. Once, you even came to the bedroom late to find her with her nose inside a certain manuscript.

The city is a hard place for anyone. You know that. Thought it doesn’t make the sight of her any easier.

Cricket is still dragging his dagger against the stone restlessly, and you feel a pang of pity for the poor blade. You would just ignore something as not your business, but then you remember _children Isabela_, and recognize that he may just not know any better.

“Careful with that, dear,” you tell him. “You’ll wreck the edge.”

Cricket blinks for a moment, then solemnly tucks it back into its sheath. The two of you wait, depending on the night for a templar patrol that’s bound to come, and you think there’s something inevitable about never getting a good night’s sleep.

“I missed you too,” Cricket says. It’s a confession.

For a second, your wormy face returns. You slide an arm around his shoulders. “I’m not leaving again.” And then, because he offered something to you, you say, “there wasn’t a day I didn’t look across that sea and think of you all.”

He’s quiet for a moment. “I miss Bella.”

“Didn’t she used to put stink beetles on your pillow?”

Cricket makes a face. “I miss her sometimes.” You laugh. “We used to go into the square sometimes, Gideon would take us and show us how to skip stones on fountain.” At his mention, the squeeze you have around Cricket becomes a constriction. He can tell, because he looks up at you and says, “it’s not your fault, you know.”

A weak chuckle falls out of you, the effort of letting go a lesson in itself. Deliberately, in through the nose and out through the mouth, you let the feeling in your throat loosen.

When you open your eyes, you glance down at Cricket. “Didn’t your mother tell you that a boy of fifteen has no right to be so wise? It makes all the adults around you look bad.”

Cricket doesn’t smile. He never does, even when you know he’s happy. He’s just the kind of boy who makes those obvious statements under the moon that no one else seems to realize. So he just nods, and you know that he knows. Sometimes, it takes a boy with red hair and a thoughtful frown to point out what everyone else will miss.

The two of you could sit there underneath that starry blanket for as long as it takes for your mark to arrive, but bleeding hearts and philosophizing are cut short with a scramble up the rocks behind you. You both turn.

It’s one of Varric’s people. A Carta turned informant turned normal person lets out a panting gasp as she struggles to regain her breath, wide eyes under a thick brow landing on you the moment she does. “Warning from the Captain of the Guard. I couldn’t find Varric, but you’re here.”

By all logic, she shouldn’t have been able to find you either; no one is supposed to know you’re up here. But that thought and all others are wiped away when the messenger delivers her warning:

“The clinic. They know.”

You’re off the roof in less than a minute, sliding down a gutter pipe and taking risks you shouldn’t, yet still feeling all too slow. Your boots clatter so loudly in the night, mission forgotten, the image of a sun touched sanctuary bathed in blood clear in your mind as you take no caution down the sloping streets to the dark. You lose Cricket halfway there, but behind is safer than in front, and you can’t let the moment make you too late-

You arrive in Darktown with you daggers in your fists. This is no templar raid. This is a massacre.

There is screaming, bodies on the floor of armored and not alike, some unrecognizable bits of burned flesh wrapped in fabric. There is lighting in the air, Justice floating two feet off the ground, blasting Templars in a whirlwind electric fire, the last man standing in a lost battle. Your foot crosses the threshold just in time to watch the Knight-Captain put a sword through his back.

You think you scream. It’s hard to tell over the sound of blood pulsing in your ears, careening as you are toward him even as Anders’s body flickers and falls. The Knight-Captain is standing over him, sword still raised, when you come from behind and draw both daggers through the back of his neck. It’s a perfect triangle, one that spurts blood up onto you through the severed spine, a long diagonal stripe of warm red that does not bring Anders back. The clinic rings suddenly silent.

Stumbling toward Anders, you collapse. His eyes are gone of that glowing blue, and meet yours for the briefest of seconds. “…what I could…” escapes his lips, his blood-soaked hand reaching up to brush against your shoulder.

You mean to ask him to heal, to call on anything left inside him after that raw unrelenting power, but he dies, and the words never make it past your lips. There is no on left alive in the clinic. You hold the abomination off the straw-covered floor and wish that included you too.


	5. I'll Follow You into the Dark

It happens upon you that you can’t find Cricket. You retrace your steps, but you don’t see him in this familiar city that’s somehow become a maze, and you end up with nothing but wander in your legs as you stagger about Kirkwall in a trance. If someone were to ask you to recount your time in those thin alleys, calling his name, you’re not sure you’d be able to. _He’ll find his way home_, is the thought that cuts through your mind eventually. You make your way back to the estate.

Aveline is there. Expected—it’s been a few hours. Hours since Anders died. Before your adventure in the streets, you stayed in the clinic afterwards to cut throats and to cut purses as a matter of habit. Kill them and take their stuff, that’s all your good for isn’t it, O Captain Isabela?

Seven different emotions cross Aveline’s face when she sees you step under the flickering chandelier. Hawke is nearing the double digits.

Aveline performs some quick calculations. She turns, adjusting to address both of you. “Meredith’s on a rampage. Her Knight-Captain’s dead, and she’s tearing apart the city for every apostate under the floorboards.”

Ah. Another thing to be expected. You _are_ wearing a good deal of him on your shirt.

Aveline tells you this in such a neutral air of plausible deniability, like she expects you to not already know. Just sharing news with her old friends. “She’s petitioned the Viscount for control of the guard,” she finishes.

You tell by steel in her eyes how well that will go. You want to ask if she expects Dumar to grant it, but your tongue feels heavy in your mouth. Hawke’s eyes hold you over Aveline’s, and instead you ask, “did Cricket come home?”

Hawke nods.

That, at least, is one less snag. She looks like she wants to go to you, but she doesn’t, not with the state you’re in. You want to demand why she wasn’t there. Why wasn’t Aveline. Why wasn’t anyone there when it mattered?

(Why is it that even when _you’re_ there, you can’t stop it?)

Hawke pulls you away eventually, past several pairs of eyes that should long be in bed. In the washroom, her fists glow orange and she heats the basin with magic. Helps you get clean, then goes to conspire with Aveline in hushed whispers outside the door. You sit in the bath water until morning, the ripples long grown pink and gold. Aveline leaves. Hawke burns your blouse.

* * *

Aveline is arrested later that week.

Detained for resisting Templar jurisdiction along with several of her supporters, or so the report goes. The news comes solemnly from Brennan, who has eyes that plead at Hawke to _do something about it_. You want to shake her. Hasn’t Hawke done enough for this damn city? Does every fundamental crack in foundation have to fall to her to pave it over? They made her Champion because they wanted someone in charge who they could point at and say, “there! That’s the one who won’t fix anything!”

Hawke thanks Brennan, and she goes.

Meredith has been inexorable. Not Dumar, not the Grand Cleric, not anyone has stepped in to stop her. The number of suspected apostates has been shrinking by the day, sometimes a dozen at a time, dragged from their homes and to the Gallows if they make it that far. Normal people, living their lives for years, and suddenly…they’re all gone. More tranquil are in the courtyard every day.

The two of you sit in the bedroom; you with a deck you idly shuffle, Hawke with a book she isn’t reading. The chairs are close together, red and puffy, as warm and sleepy as the trappings that adorn the rest of the room.When you first came home from your ‘vacation’, they had been quite far apart, the drag marks in the carpet still healing like a leftover bruise. But they’ve found their way back together somehow; your shoulder brushes hers.

“Is this the end of the world, Hawke?” you ask, tracing the geometry in the ceiling with your eye.

“I’ve never known you to be defeatist.” She turns until your hands touch instead. “We have our home. We have our family.”

“At some point,” you drawl, “hope stops becoming brave and starts becoming what an old woman clings to because she can’t bare to admit she’s buggered.”

Hawke intakes. Her eyes close behind those too-small reading glasses. “You’re awfully cruel to me Isabela.” You say nothing, and wait. Eventually she opens them again. “I suppose I’ve been very cruel to you as well.”

You think on that a moment. “Often the truth is cruel. People usually say that _of_ truth to _excuse_ the cruelty, but sometimes…when you love someone, you need to tell them that they’ve been wrong. No matter how much it hurts them.”

“I think,” Hawke says, her fingers intertwining with yours, “we’ve proven to be uniquely good at that.”

“That we have.”

“If this is the end of the world, Isabela,” Hawke says, and you know she could ask you to do anything and you’d say yes, “will you stay with me?”

You bring up her hand and press the barest memory of a kiss against the dusk of her knuckles. “’Til the curtain falls.”

The smile that crosses that face could crush mountain, kill knights, calm seas. To you, it becomes your everything, and you are happy to bear witness to the raw destruction it brings.

“Mummy? Mummy? Isa?”

The call comes small down those velvet halls, getting closer as Malory appears in the door.

“What is it, love?” You drop your hand and beckon her over. She does gladly, crawling into your lap.

“I made something!” she says, looking to Hawke for approval as you pick a tangle in her hair. “I wanna show you. I’ll make it again.”

Hawke leans in close, watching as Malory presses her hands together. And for you, time freezes, because you know what’s going to be there when she opens them.

It’s a bird. It’s red and glowing, and as she spreads her hands it expands, bigger and bigger until you’re sure it will fill the whole room. But then the raptor dislodges from her hands, taking flight into its waiting amphitheater. She squeals in delight as it circles above your heads.

You watch it, awe carving a home in your chest, and you feel the ache of something you’ll never be able to put a name to.

“Mummy?” Malory asks suddenly, breaking you from the dream. “Are you okay?”

Hawke is still staring at the ceiling, her face bathed in red light that twinkles in lines down her cheeks.

Malory shifts in your lap. “Is…is it something bad?”

The bird disappears, casting the bedroom back into the flickering amber of torchlight. Hawke lowers her head, blinking more tears as she looks at Malory. A watery smile takes her face, though held captive through ache and pain, it still comes out.

“No dear,” she says, and leans to hold Malory’s face in her hands. “It’s not bad. Never bad. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

-

When the sun shines maroon through drawn drapes, you find her staring at the staff. It is downstairs, in the store, leaned against the wall in both equal parts reverence and discomfort—like a grandparent who’s long gone senile but you’re still not allowed to take out behind the shed. Its gem is sickly, a white milky substance permeated into the smooth amber.

She glances at you when you approach. “You said you’d stand with me. Are you willing to test that?”

“What are you planning Hawke?” you caution, sneaking beside her.

“Is that something you really want to know?”

You think upon anything that would change your answer. You think of stolen qunari powder, of a half dozen blood mages no matter where you stepped, of a little ship, tucked inside a glass bottle, safe and unbroken. Of Business in Town.

“I suppose not,” you sigh with a roll of your shoulder. “Maker Hawke, some day you’re going to lie down and actually act like the refined noblewoman you pretend to be.”

“And then you’ll leave me, because I’ll have become frightfully boring.”

You think for a moment, and shake your head. “No. I think I would like your boring.”

She catches you in a kiss, and the store smells like plums.

* * *

Orana wears a bonnet, and though she’s grown enough to be mother of the children who cling to her skirt, Hawke still tucks it behind her ears and tells her to be a good girl. She nods, green eyes glittering like lost jewels, wide and sad even if that’s nothing new. Beneath her layers, that quiet girl who loves music and makes small animals of folded napkins, there is a woman who’s grown to know that there is something wrong with the world, and sometimes all you can do is bear it. _The world is not kind to women_ you told Merrill once, but that’s only the half of it. Some will always wear chains heavier than others.

Hawke moves on to Bodahn, and he holds both of her hands in his while she says, “thank you for all that you’ve done for us.”

“It should us thanking you, messere,” he insists. “What’s a few runes when you’ve kept us all safe for so long?”

The smile she allows is thin and hurt, and for a moment you wish you’d never asked what she planned to do. When she kneels to hug Sandal, you approach Orana.

“There’s a ship waiting for you at the docks,” you tell her with an _or you’re dead, Martin_ just for yourself. “If we’re not there by morning, or if _anyone_ else tries to board, you head straight to Llomerryn and don’t look back. A man named Casavir will help you, and he better help you a _lot_ with how much he owes me.”

Orana nods, lip trembling even with the fur over her shoulders. Small cases of clothes and the children they belong to are assembled around for their goodbyes, a silent audience as the last of the daylight fades. Suddenly, Orana throws her arms around your neck, letting out a sob as the wiry appendages pull you down.

“Er,” you mutter, “right then,” and pat her on the back.

Behind her, peeking out from her own hood, Malory looks up at you with the widest eyes. As you’re held against the quietly sniffling elf, she approaches, and hugs both pairs of legs.

But then the goodbyes are over, and the Hawke Estate fractures as Bodahn and Sandal turn down Circle Street while a line of collected families stream their way into Lowtown. Then it’s just you and Hawke, stood in front that looming building for what will be the last.

You finally break the silence. “C’mon,” you huff. “I think it’s time we played naughty, and paid the Knight-Commander a wonderfully improper nightly visit.”

By the waning moon, the two of you keep your eyes in front of you, your twin footsteps making little noise as you slip your way up to the Gallows. Your little raft bumps easily against the shore, and you wonder how anyone ever escaped going the other way. The churning bay would be a rude awakening to anyone who fancied themself a good swimmer, and somehow that wayward thought brings Anders to your mind again. You shake it off. All that will soon mean very little. In the new chaos, a dip in the harbor will be the least of anyone’s worries.

Hawke fiddles, as she is want to do, the small thing you don’t quite see delivered and abandoned before you can force yourself to get a good look. She takes your wrist and leads you back to the raft, her words from earlier tickling the nape of your neck as you push off against the rocks. _Anyone can make one, but a mage can increase its effectiveness tenfold. _Where have you heard that one before?

But then it goes off and you wonder if you’ll ever hear again. A dissolving ring ripples outward, a red explosion of stone followed by silence followed by a brilliant shock-wave. In an instant, you realize how stupid you were to think your raft was safe distance away as a tidal wave rocks you nearly vertical. It bucks you until you’re ninety degrees, leaving your digging nails into wood as your arms protest, the roil doing likewise to your stomach...

But then the south-side falls down with a crash, and you land on a churning surface with a big 'ole hole in in the Gallows wall.

The soft clang of a bell begins to sound over the island. You and Hawke look at each other. You shrug. "We've come this far.”

As smoke clears, the two of you creep through in time to witness a mage fleeing a group of shouting Templars, casting a wall of sharpened frost as he goes. Your stomach sinks. You were fairly sure something like this was bound to happen—in fact, you were counting on enough pandemonium for a decent distraction—but some part of you still longed for cooler heads to prevail. Hah. Who were you kidding? This is Kirkwall, after all.

Hawke is less concerned. She guides you through the prison, the shouts reaching their crescendo. Lights spring up inside the tower, candles lit, palms ignited to peer fearfully around the room. Down here, a Templar spies the shadow of Hawke's armor against the wall and shouts, "hey!"

Hawke dispatches her with a bolt of lightning directly through the heart.

The path you take is winding, spear-toed to shadows as your practiced feet show Hawke the ropes. Yours may know the how, but hers know the where, and she takes an unflinching path through the winds of now uproarious halls. You wonder what she and Anders discussed the days they spent with their heads pressed together over pieces of scrawled parchment. Now isn't the time to ask.

Cells. Lines of them, unguarded as the last Templar looks at his partner before running off to join the fighting in the courtyard. You dart forward, a pair of lockpicks slipping from your boot and appearing in the nearest keyhole.

"Isabela?"

Aveline appears from the shadows, both eyes blackened and hair mussed, but otherwise blearily shipshape. The disbelief in her sleep-struck words is palpable.

"Expecting someone else?" Your cheeky grin causes you to snap your pin. "Shit."

As you fumble, Hawke steps up behind you. The blade of her staff glows red hot, burning like the dragon's maw that gives it its shape, and she brings it down on the lock in one fell swoop—the bite that feeds.

"Ah," Aveline says. "Hawke. That explains it."

As soon as the door is open, Hawke darts in, applying a small palm of green to Maecon, just enough that he can stand. You help Donnic to his feet, and turn to Aveline. "I suppose I owe Varric three sovereigns."

"Dare I ask why?" She runs a hand over her tired face.

"First time we met, I bet him you could beat the Knight-Commander in a fight." You shake your head. "Look at you Big Girl. You're bleeding me dry."

Her smile is thin, exhausted and perpetually sick of you, but it's there.

Hawke finishes her rounds over the other guards, appearing in front of you once again. "The Templars still have ships tied up at the gates. If you can make it there, the barracks should be a straight shot."

Donnic nods, but Aveline raises an eyebrow. "You're not coming?"

"No." And when she says it, back straight and eyes literally on fire, you could not be more in awe of her. "I'm going to find my daughter."

Aveline's face sets, and that's that. The guard depart, their captain the last to go, and she leaves with one hand on your shoulder and a look in her eye. But that's all. Then she's gone, and you’re left in the wake of a full on war.

Blasts of light and reflections off blades dance around you as your stealth is forsaken in the dungeon below the Gallows. You dodge and cut and hear screams that are pain and fury alike. There's something profane in this place, the braided rope that's stretched too thin until finally, finally someone just cut it loose and no one's around to catch the boom as she falls. There could have been another way. There must have been, but this is the life you've chosen and it’s one that leaves you beheading a woman before the abomination fully leaves her.

"Stay together! Chain your barriers!" Orsino's voice cuts above the din. You wish them the best, but the face you're looking for is still somewhere in this crowd.

"Hawke! I don't see her!" You turn to your left but Hawke is gone, and the panic snags around your ankles. "Hawke? Hawke!"

A Templar comes barreling toward you. You have no idea why, maybe they recognized you, maybe they're just charging anyone who isn’t wearing a hairy sword on their chest, either way it's trouble for you. You dodge, but the armor is less cumbersome than you would expect. Their blade goes wide, severing the straps on your shoulder and your bicep besides, but the second time around you're ready. When next they move in, you dart past them, slipping through like the wind. You rock back on your heel and drive both daggers into their spine.

They clatter to the ground behind you. One Templar dead, a hundred more surrounding you. You stampede through the chaos and scream Hawke's name like she herself is a spell you can summon. Your shoulder is torn, you collect gashes along your forehead and thighs, rips in your body that you’ve grown accustom to ignoring, fine details usually mended with little flicks of warm light. Friends with magic hands have made you soft, Captain. In your mind, Anders is here, murmuring in that low tone of his that if you were any true duelist, you wouldn't have gotten so scraped up in the first place.

You remember magic. You hold on to the spell. You follow it, darting, thrashing through the ruinous bodies until-

Hawke.

You see her, hunched over in a circle of dead where the fighting won't touch her. There is something in her arms—brown hair, limp wrist dragging in the blood-soaked dirt.

You run. You trip over a dead somebody as you do but you come flailing inwards, stumbling onto Bella's other side as you fall to your knees. The question sticks in your throat, the one that won't make it past your lips as a trail of blood runs from Hawke’s. "Bella...?"

Hawke's head snaps back. The trail of light you hadn't noticed frays, severing Hawke's connection and sending Bella into a weak cough.

She opens her eyes. "...Mother?" Her eyes focus on you. "Isabela…?" 

Her voice is so much deeper, so much older, and all at once every year she was stolen from you comes in a rush. You pull her and Hawke to you, shoulders shaking even though no tears come out. You hold your family in the middle of a burning city and let loose a lifetime of injustice from your lungs.

"We're here darling," Hawke says, muffled. Her hand strokes your hair. "We've all reached the end."

* * *

The morning light leaves black streaks on the sky where Kirkwall burns. The smell of sea can't overcome the telltale stench of fire as it touches untreated construction, and you feel you'll carry the smoke in your throat long after those smudges have gone on the horizon. The tide turned when the guard arrived, back again as the returned heroes no one had ever thought to look for. It was their Captain's choice to make, and she bought you time enough.

Hawke comes to place a hand atop yours, thin and calloused and the first hint of spots. You grip the banister until your nails chip wood.

"Never did think about leaving," you note as orange begins to paint the grey expanse, taken by the sea and shattered a thousand times. "Even in all that, you wanted to stay."

"...Yes," she sighs, the admission leaving her lungs and emptying into sails.

"Why?"

"...They say what makes a tragedy is when it is doomed from the start." She looks across the sea, your sea, the one you love and are willing to share. "The Champion is flawed, and can't escape her flaws, so set are they are into who she is. Maybe that's how I get out Isabela: I change. That's how I escape my story."

"You did," you say, finding her hip with yours. "For them."

"And for you."

You smile, but save it for the sea, that ever-present love, that is also freedom from love itself. You don't know if you can teach it to Hawke, but by Andraste you'll try.


End file.
